my life on the road, in the air, at sea, on the rocks, and everywhere in between

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I’m trying to sell my kayak. I bought it twelve years ago, and enjoyed paddling it maybe half a dozen times a year for the first few years. Gradually, motherhood overtook life, then an obsession with rock climbing, and the next thing you know, the kayak is basically just an annoying tripping hazard in my garage, blocking my expertly-organized storage racks, and piled upon with…more stuff. It’s essentially buried in the catacombs of the archaeological site that is the basement/garage under the house that contains the actual stuff of our daily life. It brings to mind the gold-rush era shipwrecks underneath the landfill on which San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood was built.

“Trying” to sell the kayak involved a listing on Nextdoor, Craigslist, and Facebook Marketplace, using pictures swiped from the manufacturer’s website, since I was too lazy to excavate the kayak to take real life photos. Besides, then I would be confronted with all the other stuff sitting between me and the boat, another strata of more-recently used things that don’t yet have a permanent place in the catacombs.

More importantly, I was too busy taking care of life maintenance prior to my most recent trip to Oregon. This trip was to help my mom clean out her garage, a part of the effort to clean out her house, pack it, and stage it for sale. She’s going to move closer to my brother and his family.

It’s important to understand that my mom has lived in this house for twenty years. And like me, Mom is a renaissance woman, a polymath, a volunteer, a crafter, a cook, a baker, a pet owner, a traveller, a mother, et cetera, et cetera. So mom has a lot of…stuff. See, one has to acquire the tools of the trade for all of these -ers one becomes. One does not simply *become* a quilter, a scrapbooker, a President of the Chamber of Commerce, a teacher, or a hostess. One must equip.

BUT HOLY HELL, THE STUFF.

I think we can stipulate that one’s accumulation of STUFF grows in proportion to the space in which one has to store it, with probably a 5% increase per annum for every year after 5 years living in one place, plus perhaps another 2% increase per child’s marriage and per grandchild. The compound stuff-interest of living a full life.

This is how a three-bedroom two-bath house with a two-car garage can get filled floor-to-ceiling with…stuff. Every gadget, and even duplicates of gadgets. And then, when one approaches 70 and wants to move, one must face this reality by enlisting one’s adult children to help move and lift the stuff, unbox, evaluate, donate, trash, and rebox. One must endure the “tough love” (aka judgement, aka harassment) from one’s conscripted children. The sighs, the callous disregard for how wonderful that throw pillow is, how ingenious that foot-heater for under the desk, and how distinctly different each of the four (or is it five? six?) floor cleaning machines is from the others.

My mother amazed me. Truly. I thought the process of going through all of these things would pain her, and would result in constant arguments between us. The occasional push-back occurred, but she calmly stood her ground on some things, and capitulated on others. It only happened a few times. Initially, I was impatient at her desire to tell me *what* each item was, and its provenance, rather than just telling me whether to donate it, trash it, or keep it. But considering how easily she was parting with most things, I eventually got over that. I grew to appreciate the fullness of her life, and her appreciation for the abundance she has been fortunate enough to enjoy.

Ultimately we made a huge dent, in only three half-ish days of work, and a few car and pickup-truck loads of donations. It was all we could physically and mentally manage each day, and we both went to sleep physically and psychically drained each night. Mom kept apologizing that we didn’t have time for “vacation” type visiting this trip, but I think this may have been our best bonding experience in a long time. No grandkids, no siblings or our partners, just me and her, excavating the memories of a life well-lived, clearing the way for a new phase in her life.

I’m inspired to get that kayak out of my house, and hopefully some other detritus too. To make more space for my kids’ sporting equipment, our climbing gear, and even just some…space. To be ready for whenever our next phase wants to start. Because holy hell, the stuff.

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Intermission. It’s been eight weeks since we left home – two adults, two children, and two cats. We still have six more weeks to go!

Yesterday I flew from West Yellowstone to San Francisco to pick the kids up from their dad to bring them back out on the road for more adventures. So today we will fly back to Yellowstone and keep on rolling. Since we sublet our house for the summer, I stayed over last night at a good friend’s house, and some other friends stopped by in the evening. So I had four people asking me questions about our trip, and me all alone (Glenn, help!) to try to answer them. I surely rambled a lot and didn’t make much sense, but they were nice to me anyway.

One thing I’m learning is that LOTS of people want to do what we’re doing. “Tell me all about what it’s like – it’s a dream of ours!” I try… But it’s not all that easy to explain what it’s like. It’s pretty much what you’d imagine it’s like: four people and two cats in a van can be cramped, cat hair ends up everywhere all the time, and there’s never enough places to put everybody’s shoes.

Even the cats are piled on top of each other

The biggest difference for me in daily life has been developing the essential routine of stowing. Stowing is not cleaning or tidying or organizing. It’s usually all of those things, but it’s also putting items away securely. One simply cannot make “piles” in a van. Everything has to get stowed. Here’s all of the stowing that happens between waking up and driving somewhere:

Put bed in upright/couch position

Strip sheet from bed

Stuff 2 blankets into their stuff sacks

Stow sheet, 2 stuff sacks, and 2 pillows in cabinet above bed/couch

Remove 2 cushions from being part of the bed

Remove table top from being part of the bed, fetch table leg, erect table

[make coffee, cook/eat breakfast, change clothes, brush teeth, etc.]

Empty coffee maker, stow in the lowest cabinet, somehow squeezing it between the pots and the Tupperware

Wash all the dishes, dry them, put them away (sometimes this can wait, if everything can fit securely inside the sink, and if we’re not going to be on any bumpy roads that would make it all rattle around a ton)

Fold pajamas and put them away (you can’t just leave them out because you’ll step on them in the tiny hallway, or the cats will lay on them and get hair all over them, or something will spill on them; and they usually have to be folded because otherwise they simply won’t fit in the place they belong)

Stow table leg and table top

Move fruit basket from counter to bench, where it (usually) won’t slide right off onto the floor (we used to keep it in the microwave, but then we’d forget about eating the fruit and it would get overripe)

Stow all books, electronics, games, EVERYTHING

Arrange our rechargeable fan just-so on the back cushion that it can still recharge and blow, but hopefully won’t crash onto the floor

…and that’s when it’s just me and Glenn. With the boys’ beds in the mix, there’s even more.

Stowing is not to be confused with STASHING. Before we started our trip, I knew we’d need more storage/stowage than what we had. So I ordered us some stretchy mesh pockets to mount on the wall – I call them stash pockets.

The stash pockets – the bottom two are used for shoes, and the very bottom one was also a perfect place to secure wine bottles!

The beautiful drawers Glenn built me for my “closet”

The idea is that some items should be readily accessible, and that storing them inside a cabinet or box is impractical because they’ll just get buried in there and you’ll never be able to find them when you need them. So instead, they need “stash spots.” These can be parts of the car like a cubby, cup holder, or glove compartment; or, they can be add-on stash pockets. But the idea only works if you use the same stash spot for the same item all the time. Otherwise you can’t remember where you put the thing the last time, and it might as well just be bopping around in Granny’s junk drawer for all the luck you’re going to have locating it.

Some examples of stashes: by the bed, which is also under the TV, and next to the charging ports, we have a stash pocket which holds the remote controls, charging cables, and Chapstik. The Chapstik is the stash. In the upper stash pocket by the sliding door, we keep cat treats, the cats’ leashes, walkie talkies, and cameras. Honestly, everything in there is a stash, but the thing I grab most often from there is the good camera. The keys to the cargo box have a stash spot that we both use religiously, which is kind of a miracle. The trouble comes when you get lazy and don’t re-stash your stash after using it. Or worse, if you stash it somewhere else. This bad habit of mine long ago earned me the taunt “Stasher!” Now if some always-easy-to-find thing goes missing, I get called a stasher and get shamed for stashing it somewhere random. Yes, stowing/stashing/organizing is so important in our lives that it was the genesis of a new kind of domestic teasing.

By now someone’s thinking, “Nobody cares about that boring stuff! What about traveling all the time?!” Well, it’s awesome. And taxing. It can be a lot of planning – doesn’t always need to be, but can be. And a lot of driving. And we eat “in” a lot more on the road than we do at home in the city, so there’s a lot of shopping, cooking, and dishwashing to do. But yeah, getting to see cool different places all the time is rad. Duh!

So far we’ve been to five states and ten national parks. We’ve climbed in more different spots than I can accurately count without doing a lengthy look back at our records. Wildflowers blooming all over the Rockies, elk and mule deer munching grasses, raptors screeching to defend their nesting area, chipmunks and squirrels chirping out an alarm when the cats come outside to play, marble-size hail bouncing off the van and the ground, the smoke-tinged horizon glowing peach and hibiscus at sunset, rivers bending gently through a grass valley or raging ferociously through a rocky gorge, and craggy peaks high above, daring us to climb them; these are the sights and sounds of our summer so far. And I can’t wait to get back to them.

After two full days of packing up the house for storage and loading the van, we finally got out of San Francisco at 5:40pm.

Our first stop was Glenn’s mom’s place, where his van will spend the summer. (Thankfully, our subtenant is letting me leave my car in the driveway at home!) After 86 miles, we got to Woodland around 8:15, and we’re welcomed with tiki torches in the garden, and chili rellenos and cold beer. Heaven!

We also got to check out Lisa and Tom’s giant new RV, with slide-outs, mood lighting and all. The boys were impressed, but when I asked if we should get one like this, they said, “No it’s way too big!” Good, because look at the cockpit controls on this thing!

I managed to get the boys to write in their journals, as recommended by their teachers to minimize the “summer slide.” We also got to start another book from our Roald Dahl collection, Danny the Champion of the World. They didn’t get to bed until 10:30! We all slept in Glenn’s childhood bedroom, which he informed us was plastered in posters of bands and skateboarders when he was a teenager.

After sleeping in a bit, we got our act together and went to the park nearby to get a little play time before we drove all day. We went there with Glenn’s mom Lisa and her dog Jazzy.

After a quick stop at Target we got on our way, heading south toward Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks, ready to finally say hello to adventure!﻿

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No, my kids will not be doing summer camps through Rec & Park this summer. Don’t worry, I think I’ll be able to keep them entertained.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I had an epiphany last summer, and bought myself a van. Technically, it’s a Class B motorhome, but I’m too young to own a motorhome, so I just call it a van. All the cool kids are doing it. Ya know, #vanlife and all that.

The plan was to hit the road this summer for my family reunion in Denver in July. We live in San Francisco, so there’s a…how would you say?…fuck ton of cool shit between us and Denver. Especially for climbers. And then you get there, and there’s even more climbing. And you’re already halfway to all these other remote awesome places, so you might as well just make a summer of it.

Without further ado, it is time to unveil our plan:

14 weeks / 102 Days

6,515 miles + local exploration

10 states + 1 Canadian province

>25 climbing areas*

15 National Parks

8 National Monuments, National Conservation Areas, and State/Provincial Parks (probably more, hard to remember what all of these places are, I’ll get back to you)

1 climbing stewardship workshop in Yosemite

1 family reunion

(hopefully) some volunteer conservation work

1 week at Burning Man – my first time ever

You can check out our itinerary here, although with the freedom of the van, we will surely deviate from these plans many times. But hopefully we’ll get to climb climb climb!!

Side note: You should seriously checkout Furkot – it’s the most robust road trip planner I’ve ever imagined! I plugged in our destinations, dates, and durations of stays, and it plotted this route for us. I still need to scrutinize it, to make sure there aren’t any awesome side roads we’d miss with this route, but it sure helps in planning! It will even help you find lodging and activities nearby. Oh, and it will sync with TripIt. I haven’t even scratched the surface on what it can do. Amazing.

The kids will be along about half the time (and no, they’re not coming to Burning Man). I have to share them with their dad, so they’ll be spending a couple of weeks with us at a time. We haven’t made flight arrangements yet, but the plan depends on a combination of:

Their dad will fly to where we are and explore the area with them, then return them to us and fly home

Their dad will fly to where we are to pick them up/drop them off

I will fly to SF to pick them up/drop them off

Maybe their dad will even rent a van of his own and do some traveling around

Thankfully, he’s being super supportive of this whole plan, and expressed a interest in exploring these places with the boys this summer even before I told him about our BIG idea.

The kids are excited about going to so many places, camping, and climbing so much. They’re not excited to drive a whole lot. We’re trying to break up the driving as much as possible, keeping it to a couple of hours at a time, but sometimes you just have to go a long way in one day! And hopefully while they’re with us we can stay camped and climb in one area for a few days in a row. I think moving every day would wear us all down, not just the kids.

I’m planning on making some improvements to the van before we go. I want to replace the flooring, get a new stereo (the one in there now doesn’t have bluetooth audio, and I’m basically dependent on that technology to function as a driver), have the original decals removed, and get a custom skin put on the lower panel of the outside (here’s an example of what I’m talking about, but we’d have a different pattern). I also need to track down the perfect hitch-mounted cargo box. We’ve been discussing these plans for some time, and now it’s only 50 days away. FIFTY DAYS?! WHAT?! Guys, I gotta go.

HELP!

One more quick thing – HELP ME! If you have suggestions for any of the following, please comment!